Fish paste can be used in different cooking methods. Eg, boiling (fish ball or yu wat 鱼滑), steaming (with beancurd 老少平安, otak-otak）, stuffing (yong tau fu 酿豆腐）, pan-frying or deep-frying (patties, fish cakes).
My mother-in-law is an expert in making fish paste. She learnt the techniques by watching her neighbour doing it since she was a child. I enjoyed eating those dishes she made using...

As compared to siu kao (boiled dumplings), making siew mai (steamed dumplings) is more challenging to me. I had failed several times until my hubby teased me that he needs to ta pao (take-away) some siew mai from the hawker stall for me to “review my mistakes”. After doing a lot of “researches” from the internet and cookbooks, I had finally found a GREAT recipe from “The Essence of Good Cooking”...

One afternoon, my son and I were having our tea break in the kitchen. I was busy reading a cookbook.Son: “Mommy, what are you looking at?”Me: “I am reading a recipe called “Braised Buddha’s hand gourd with mushroom”. I will cook it tonight for our dinner. Do you like it?”I pointed out a photo of the gourd to my son.Son: “What is this?”Me: “This is Amitābha (Buddha)’s hand and we are going...

As a Penangite (born and raised in Penang), this dish is my all-time favourite. My mother used to make this dish whenever there was a special occasion like Chinese New Year or family gathering. Because of my personal craving, I had tried out this dish based on the recipe from Special Quick & Delicious Vegetable Cookbook with some slight modifications.
Ingredients:
500g yambean/ sengkuang 沙葛 (peeled...

This is a very common and popular dessert among the Chinese. In fact, it is also my hubby’s all-time favourite. As there are too many good recipes on hand, I had totally forgotten about his request. Last weekend, I had made this dessert especially for him so that I can happily cross out this “long outstanding” and “KIV” request from my checklist.
My references are from the followings:
a) 我的厨房笔记...

“What is zucchini?” “How do I cook it?”
I have been asked myself these 2 questions since I started cooking western food. Coming from a typical Chinese family, I have never tried zucchini before. After going through my cookbooks and browsing all online recipes, I just realized that there are so many ways to cook zucchini ie baked, grilled, stir-fry and stew. Below is a recipe adapted and modified from...

This egg roll is not a pre-planned dish. The idea came to me when I was cooking lunch for both my son and myself on one Saturday afternoon when my hubby was away for his overseas trip. Basically, I just combined some ingredients from my cooked dishes and followed the method in this post. (If you can read chinese, refer to this site). Thus, I didn’t have the exact measurement. You may need to use your own...

My weekends are always tied up with the routine “once-a-week” groceries shopping. Last Sunday was even busier. After all the housework and cooking, we have to rush for an appointment. Due to time constraints, I just snapped some quick shots of my chicken rice directly from the claypot. Later on, I only realized that my cooked rice had been fully covered by the ingredients. As we had started eating,...

This afternoon, I had created a very “fusion” combo for my son and myself.=> Cabbage omelettes + sesame seeds rice balls + stir-fried mushrooms.(However, my son who is a fan of soup, after finishing his meals, said “Mummy, where is today’s soup?” :-[ )
This lunch combo is also great to use as a bento set. Recipes for cabbage omelette rolls and sesame seeds rice ball are adapted and modified from...